Anaplan vs. CallidusCloud LeadRocket (discontinued)

I've implemented a number of projects for Anaplan for Sales Performance Management use cases. It is obviously built for financial planning, but it allows for a lot of flexibility for territory and quota, ICM, sales forecasting, and other important use cases. Territory and Quota is very powerful in the tool as it organize complex assignment structures into hierarchies for easier analysis and reporting.

We have really enjoyed the personal level of customer service with CallidusCloud and the quick turn around on any concerns and issues. CallidusCloud works well as an integrated instance with Salesforce and also as a stand alone instance that can send to csv files. We have been able to build campaigns, track success of said campaigns and manage automation. The level of integration has been key to our success and to the ability to create professional, personalized templates that are true to our brand but allow us to innovate. We also are pleased with the way that we can add blocks of emails on during our busy times so that service is not interrupted.

Incentivized

• Anaplan removes the time consuming process of integrating the results of individual spreadsheets.
• Anaplan facilitates the standardization of assumptions across all sub-processes
• Anaplan provides full transparency of the calculations and source inputs
• Anaplan allows us to automate certain planning processes that would have been impossible when relying on the computational capabilities of an individual computer.

• Reporting - we can send out emails all day, but if we don't have something to report to the client after-the-fact it voids the entire process. Genius provided a visually stimulating reporting tool.
• Tracking - Genius was great at tracking opens, clicks, bounces, hard bounces, etc. This helped us clean up our system as we sent campaigns out.
• CRM Integration - Genius was great about tracking each contact (in Salesforce) and their activity via emails.

• Some end users don't spend the required amount of time to familiar themselves with Anaplan.
• Auditability, while good in theory, can be lacking and clunky when needed.
• Model building can become convoluted over time, leading to confusion over the specific use of line items.

• One area of LeadFormix that could be improved is the way it schedules out an email to multiple lists. It can get problematic when an email scheduled to ten lists takes ten hours (one list per hour) to go out. It also isn't efficient to make us schedule individual emails instead of this process. I would like to be able to send out an email to ten lists and have it arrive in everyone's mailboxes at the time I scheduled it for.
• The email design platform could use work. I've resorted to coding my emails using html, since the WYSIWYG platform seems to add unwanted and un-needed style codes throughout the email (it's not a platform for people unfamiliar with coding).

Anaplan is a very strong multi-dimensional modeling tool that provides a calculation engine to empower a complex planning process. It is fairly easy to learn for those with experience in similar tools, or excel. It forces structure and auditability that spread sheets do not have, along with extensive security capabilities

Since the company has grown, the personal touch has dispatched and it's more difficult to get a rep. There is no longer a phone call that can be made but the responses don't take as long as others and the glitches are becoming more and more frequent.

Incentivized

As a user it is a very simple tool, but at the same time with a very mature and powerful calculation engine. It is very easy to switch from excel or traditional tools with added capabilities of multi dimensionality and real time calculation engine to see quick insights needed to create plans and scenarios

Very easy to use and designed well.

There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues

Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.

Incentivized

Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.

It has declined since we started with this company and it could be better.

Incentivized

In my opinion, in-person training is always the best if you have the option to do so. This allows real-time interactions with the instructions, whereas the online training I took required me to write-down questions, email them, and wait for responses. This slows down the process, as you can imagine. That said, in-person training is an extra cost and it likely isn't needed for everyone. I would suggest selecting a small number of people to take in-person training and then having them act as mentors to the rest of your team. That way, as the rest of the team takes the online training, they have a resource to help them in real time.

Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams

One key insight from implementing Anaplan is that success comes from focusing on designing the process, not just building the model. Anaplan is extremely flexible—there are very few planning scenarios it cannot support—but that flexibility means the project needs strong governance, clear ownership of requirements, and a well-defined data model. When those foundations are in place, implementations are fast, iterations are easy, and users can quickly see value.
In our projects, both Financial Planning and Integrated Business Planning models were adopted smoothly because we involved business users early, kept the model design intuitive, and leveraged Anaplan’s Excel-like syntax and user-friendly dashboards. The result was more efficient day-to-day work, reduced manual tasks, and increased collaboration across teams. In short: when you combine Anaplan’s flexibility with a structured implementation approach, adoption and value realization happen quickly.

Anaplan is more powerful than Pigment considering that it is an Enterprise class system and is able to manage bigger data sets. Anaplan allows for advanced scenario modeling and formula capabilities along with custom reporting functionalities. Anaplan has proven its capabilities and stability across various use cases and across bigger enterprises when compared to Pigment which is still in earlier phases of its development

We selected CallidusCloud (Genius) based on the level of service for the price. It was more cost effective then Silver Pop which was another tool recommended to us. On the other hand, mail chimp did not provide the level of integration needed with our CRM - Salesforce. We need to be able to connect the response to an email campaign to the individual contact (student) record and determine the success of the campaign.

Incentivized

We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption

• Anaplan's implementation led to a significant reduction in planning cycle errors and bugs, streamlining processes and improving overall accuracy in data inputs
• Standardizing the planning process and enabling cross-functional collaboration through Anaplan enhanced our ability to adapt swiftly to changing business needs, resulting in improved agility in decision-making
• The platform's capabilities, especially in Demand Planning and Supply Chain, positively impacted our ROI by optimizing resource allocation and solving complex business problems efficiently across multiple functions

• We have had problems with our emails landing up in spam which was hampering out marketing efforts.
• Too many features that add very little value to business
• You spend too much of time on the tool because the UI is very confusing

Incentivized